John Muir is Waiting

A Wonderful Mystery and My Last Blog Post

2006-08-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Today was a day of wonderful serendipity, of make-it-happen pixie dust.
It didn't start out that way. It started out with me feeling defeated. I finished my 60 days of trying to get my body in shape and have been in the midst of meddling, trying to help get the other stuff, gear and tech etc. to make the John Muir Trail project happen the way I picture it in my mind.
There have been obstacles (there always are). It was looking like there would be no pictures sent from the trail. We couldn't get the right equipment.
And then. Oh who knows exactly what happened? I think it helped that an executive in the company that owns my newspaper heard about the project and he backpacks and he loves the John Muir Trail and he thought it was a great idea.
(The funny thing is that the executive happened to have a conversation about the JMT story because of a story I wrote about nuns...nuns who's special calling is praying for mass media journalists!)
We're set now. We'll have the technical equipment we need. We will be blogging and sending photos from the trail.
I'd talked to my friend Michael Mayhew in the morning while I was still stymied, feeling like possibilities were slipping through my fingers faster than silly string. He's a film editor and television writer, so sometimes when working at a newspaper starts feeling Byzantine I call him. He works in Hollywood. He's got me beat.
When everything did the complete U-turn, I called him back with the happy news.
He said it's like that scene in the movie "Shakespeare in Love". The theater owner Mr. Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) is explaining how putting on a play works. He says the natural condition is "One of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster."
But that it always turns out well in the end.
They ask him how. And he says:
"I don't know. It's a mystery. "

It's such a beautiful mystery.

This is my last blog here.
The show is about to begin.
The other writers and I will be blogging at www.fresnobeehive.com/jmt Our John Muir project site launches Aug. 6.
And I start hiking the John Muir Trail on Aug 8...

Game on. Wish me luck.
d.

Finally, a short entry

2006-07-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

I have been going to yoga class -lots and lots of yoga classes - to get ready to hike the JMT.

Today, I found out that Marek, the experienced wilderness guy, has been running aroung his neighborhood with a backpack full of rocks.

Yoga. Stone-laden runs.

Pretty much says it all.

The Proving Grounds Prove Unsettling (Or, I am SO screwed.) Part II

2006-07-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Note: I learned something about blogging. You can't walk away from an unfinished post to go get something to eat or you might then get sleepy and go to bed and then be running late the next day for your vacation of backpacking-kayaking-camping- and not see a computer for a week. But, I'm back, and at a keyboard. So...

When last we left off Shellee, Rich and I were starting the climb to the peak of San Jacinto. We'd left home in a rush. I was wearing shorts and a strappy tank. Supply-wise we had some water, Shellee's never-used space blanket, and a few walnuts. Experienced hikers call these kinds of people idiots.

Getting off the tram cars you walk down a steep cement path that leads you into the San Jacinto Wilderness at 8,400 elevation. We were on our way to the 10,800 foot peak. It's 11 miles round-trip. The sidewalk was covered with dirt and rocks, obvious remnants of a storm from the night before. It was gray out and strangely humid.

"I don't care if it rains," says Shellee.

"Bring it on," she says, using a phrase she detests. "I would actually welcome being wet."

This is what Palm Springs summers do to a person. Rich, equally deranged by too many days of 112 plus, was quite in agreement with her.

I, on the other hand ,was reviewing all the reading I've been doing lately about lightening strikes, and body temperatures and other such wilderness hazards.

I do not wish to give you false foreshadowing. So, I'll tell you right now, by some fluke it did not storm on us.

But, the point is, that it sure as heck looked like it was going to, so I did not protest the 100-yard dash pace that we quickly set. Nothing like running straight up a granite cliff. But I figured it was important for us to get to the top and quickly back down before being caught in the thunderstorm the other two were ready to welcome.

We stormed past the Japanese tourists in their spanking new hiking clothes. Two small women were hunched over like the letter c carrying huge packs on their backs. I briefly noted, while stomping - no time to stop and contemplate them -that they looked mighty uncomfortable. Miserable in fact. And they were only going a hop and skip to Long Valley. I was about to traverse the Sierra with a backpack.

We ran into a couple coming down from the top and I stopped to ask them about the previous night's storm. They said there had been lightening strikes and ground-shaking thunder. The rangers had got everyone down off the peak and piled them all into the small shelter. Many people had just been wearing cotton shorts and tank tops, they mentioned without making it seem like a direct commentary on our clothing, and they had all huddled in there shivering for hours. We wished them a good day and continued our trek to that same peak in our cotton clothes.

The scenery was stark. Yes, the trees were towering. But this is a mountain that raises straight from the desert floor. It's trees are whipped with furious winds and storms and lately bark beetles. So their branches are all stubby and twisted like their suffering from some terrible neurological disorder. There are almost as many tall ghostly white trees laying on the ground as reaching the sky.

"The cycle of life," says Shellee,

"A tree cemetery ," I say.

Finally we are through the evil woods and moving into bushy hedges and we come out on the side of the mountain where there would indeed be breathtaking vistas if I could look about, but we're moving fast and I have to watch where I'm putting my feet. So for over an hour while coming around the side of a 10,800 foot peak what I see is about two feet of dirt like a horse with blinders. Every once in a while, I stop to breathe and look but always within seconds is the sound of other hikers coming up behind me. It's a very crowded trail.

Also, there is Shellee ahead of me. We are the dearest and most competitive of friends. We first met years ago when an editor at a paper I'd just started working at told me I was his next best writer to Shellee Nunley. I went out of that office annoyed, thinking, "Ok, so just who is this Shellee chic?" I went to find out. We started talking and we've been seeing who can run faster, jump highest and write the better transition ever since. We knocked it off for a little while, a few years back, after we almost drowned our friend Larry. (We got in a kayak race, when we were just supposed to be toodling Larry, who swims in the manner of a wind-up toy - lots of flapping about , no forward motion - around a bay. Someone went faster and then someone else went a little faster and next thing you know we were racing off into the ocean until I looked back and saw Lar's capsized boat. His hat floating ominously on the water. It is an infamous day he has lived to make sure we never forget.

However, on San Jacinto, Larry was not with us as reminder of the evils of competition, and the thought of Shellee making it up that mountain before me was not to be tolerated .(Rich I don't compete with. He's too much bigger than me.) But about a mile from the top, for the first time in my adult life I just didn't care if Shellee got there without me. I was at this point just so disgusted with the whole trudge trudge trudge, puff, puff, puff thing.

"You just go right on ahead and trot up that mountain Missy, " I thought and slowed my gate. And caught my breath immediately. At which point I had a terrible thought.

What if I am in shape and this is just how exertion feels? I mean what if this is as good as it gets? It's not like I was collapsing or anything. I just didn't like breathing heavy and having my muscles strain. So I trudge and puff and strain and occasionally glance at dead trees and get to the little shack a good five minutes after my friends. I am feeling very cross. But then I remember there's a peak sign-in book in that shack. Oh-ho-ho.. There's a reason I'm a writer. And a few yards in front of me is paper and a pen.

I go in there and flip through all the "Awesome Views! Our second trip to the top!Margarite and Hans" and innumerable "We made it's" with little annoying smiley faces, and add my own commentary:

"Ok all you John Muir types. What exactly is so wonderful about some clumps of granite and a few trees with cerebral palsy? Look out. Look down below at that green in the distance. Down there are restaurants and mister systems and margaritas and people conversing instead of puffing in hermithood . .." I go on for a bit, amusing my cranky soul greatly, and sign it "Not John Muir's Type."

I come out of the shack with a smile on my face, to the disappointment of Shellee and Rich who had plotted to launch into an angelic rendition of Valerie Valerah in counterpoint to my scowl.

They sang anyway. I had to laugh. They sounded like the Whos in Whoville. I thought everything was going to be ok. But then I remembered. There's this thing that apparently all human beings have except me, where it is not ok to sit and enjoy a 357 degree view. Oh no, you have to precariously crawl over boulders up to the tip tip top, risking your life so you can have a 360-degree view and take a snapshot with the peak sign.

So we do. And at one point I slip, and end up with one foot on one boulder and the other foot on another with about a 15 foot drop between them. And my vertigo which makes me feel like I'm going to tumble 10,800 feet setting in. There's a church group up there with about 14 members of all shapes and sizes cheerily leaping from rock to rock, as I stand heart-thumpingly paralyzed.

Finally, we head down. And for some reason I keep stumbling and kicking rocks. Probably because I am busy talking, theorizing that maybe I'm just descended from a line of people who preferred the seashore. That perhaps I'm genetically disinclined to mountains. I am amusing myself. But I complain about repeatedly almost breaking my toes, and ask Rich and Shellee to watch me and see if I'm walking wrong or something. But Rich says, "You know what's causing you to trip? And makes his hand do that universal sign for gabbing too much. Where you make your fingers and thumb come together quick like a mouth running on.

Now I'm mad, because apparently, it's not enough to just trudge along looking at two feet of dirt. Oh no, one must also do it in silence. He thinks it's funny that I'm peeved and starts singing Valerie Valerah, which is either an 18th century hiking song or something an MGM musician wrote for a Heidi movie. I hang back. Only to be accosted by the church group behind me singing church songs. I cross the side of the mountain silently sandwiched between Jesus tunes and Whoville. Argh.

When we get to the winding part of the trail I pass everyone. I've always liked to run on the parts they tell you not to run on. So I'm hopping from rock to rock, feeling all fleet, and I figure "Ha Ha!. I've finally left them in the dust and if I want to stop and look around and actually enjoy myself I can. " I'm by a meadow and it's almost dusk. So I walk to the edge,crouch down and quietly wait to see what shows up for a dinner of grass. Shellee and Rich are on my heels not three minutes later. I don't see a thing. So I get up and start moving just as Shellee says "Oh did you see that deer?"

As far as I know it was the only creature any of us saw all day. We didn't even see a squirrel. I have more wildlife in my urban backyard. With every step on San Jacinto I am dreading the JMT more and more. Thinking how this one day's misery will be multiplied times eight on my trip. At one point I look so miserable Rich hugs me and says "Don't be scared. You'll be fine." An then I am once again secretly annoyed at him, for 1. talking to me like I'm a 3-year-old and 2. being right, because now I am scared.

Finally, we are down the mountain. When Shelle crows that we made it to the peak in 4 hours I just want to hit her. And me. That's not even admirable. That's just insane.

But then we go to the Blue Coyote, the wonderful PS restaurant know for it's Wild Coyote margaritas. They are dangerous. And by my second one I have moved on to Big Drunken Worries. It is hitting me that I must be souless. I climbed to a peak. I looked out. I felt nothing. I only thought the trees were looking pretty peaked. While others had gloried and basked in grandeur and splendor I had wondered what in the hell we were thinking. I had spent the day with two of my oldest, dearest friends and wished I could wrap tape around their valerie-valerahing lips. Not a drip of spirituality to me, I moaned.

"Oh no Deed, You're spiritual," says Shellee, ever faithful.

"Yes, yes, " says Rich valiantly. "You are."

I'm not," I protest. "I am unmoved by grandeur and beauty (although it sounded more like Imaun ma-moo be granzhur and beateee") Name one thing I get spiritually moved over."

There is silence.

Then Shellee, who has already a couple of times that evening declared herself "drunkasaskunk" says "Flowers!"

I am filled with glee and agreement.

"You're right! I love flowers (or I luuuv Fwowers!)" I say, greatly relieved to have found a form of redemption.

So, after training for weeks, I hit the proving ground and find the only thing I have going for me going into the JMT is ...

I love flowers.

The Proving Grounds Prove Unsettling (Or, I am SO screwed.)

2006-07-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

I am so screwed. So-so-s0-so-screwed.

To review: four reporters are hiking different sections of the famed John Muir Trail. It was my idea and sincere belief that it would give structure and color to the story to see the trail from different points of view and aptitude.
So, there's the longtime backpacker who's feeling a changing season of life and wants to go to the backcountry where he always finds clarity; a spiritual young woman who in the past hiked the trail while overcoming an addiction and will be returning to a place that makes her contemplate the divine; the hardcore John-Muir-Trail-Pshaw-To-Me-It's-An-Overcrowded-Highway-Give-Me-A-Beef-Stick-And-A-Real-Trail guy; and me, the first-timer.

I thought there was some schtick involved in being the newcomer. I mean, me? backpack? Ha-ha. And so forth.
But here's where the funhouse mirrors have turned me all around. Because even though I did have a certain amount of genuine dread and anxiety (especially compared to my cohorts who are floating through air dreaming of weighing the ounces of their dry goods and fleeing civilization). I also thought my discomfiture was a great setup for a story. I may have even been playing it up a bit (deep down figuring, hey, maybe I haven't backpacked, but I've biked California, I've put my hand in a whale's mouth in a hard-to-reach Mexican cove, I've ridden on a cattle round up, so there!)
I mean you could already see where this one was heading (I thought). I'd grump and growl and fret and start stomping up that mountain only to find Well, By Golly! I had it in me after all! And oh the epiphanies that nature brings. My singing soul. (And so forth and so on.) Right? Right? Haven't we all seen this story a trillion times before?

Except:

No schtick. No shit.

I am in deep trouble.

As I found out this weekend when I hiked to the peak of San Jacinto.

It begins...well, where does it begin? Probably on Sunday driving into Pam Springs. I always look forward to going through the pass between San Jacinto and San Gorgonio the two highest peaks in Southern California. They are sentinels at the mouth of the Coachella Valley. There's a draft between them that powers a Hollands-worth of windmills and blows LA's smog back in it's face. Sometimes there is even an actual line of demarcation in the sky above the pass, one side Inland Empire gray-guck, the other, brilliant desert blue. But, when I drove into the desert on Sunday, San Jacinto was wrapped in ominous black. I looked at the peak, or where I would have seen the peak if a thunderhead wasn't draped over it. I knew there were people up there, and I could almost feel the thunder and see the cracks of lightening. Down below it was 118 degrees. Sometimes the desert just doesn't work at being a people-pleaser.

My friends Shellee and Rich told me that all day the sky had been blue and there had been just a tiny puff of cloud hanging around the top of the peak. Then out of nowhere, the black. To hear them tell it this storm had come up as suddenly as the one in the opening credits of H.R. Puff N Stuff. A real Witchy-Poo concoction.

The next day it's very humid out and the mountain is softwashed in a haze, but no thunderhead. We leave all in a flurry, because we had to go now-now-now-or-we'd-miss the first car up the tram. I did not have the presence of mind to ask why we had to make the very first car or remember my long-sleeved capilene shirt or much of anything else in all the rush.

At the tram I find out that if you miss the 10:00 tram, you take the 10:10. The 10:10! (As I will repeat loudly and drunkenly later that night).

(To be continued, after I go rustle up something to eat)

John Muir Does Palm Springs?

2006-07-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

I am on vacation.
Sort of.
I mean I'm officially on vacation, little v's lining a week full of days across my name.
But I'm not quite free yet. Plans aren't quite in motion. I randomly grabbed this week because summer vacation time in the newsroom was disappearing fast, and I have since been piece-mealing plans for it.
Next weekend Christina is coming out from Texas and we're going kayaking at Point Reyes with a group from the yoga studio. Cathy and I are going backpacking overnite on Wednesday but we haven't decided where yet and my backpack and tent are still not in.
That leaves from now until Tuesday open. I'm Free! ( love that word, that concept, that expansive feeling.)
But here, I sit on a Saturday morning of my first day of vacation quite terribly bogged down.
My house is once again threatening anarchy. As a child my parents were amazed at how fast I could make a mess. As an adult I still carry this unrivaled talent. Just one or two days of "I don't care" and I can make my living space look like the opening scene of a movie where a home has been badly ransacked. If I'm ever kidnapped and the police say there are signs of a struggle , don't believe them. I may have just been looking for my shoes.
And I am a staunch minimalist. Not every one can even make a mess who owns nary a knickknack.
So there's that. I am craving order and fresh flowers on the table and maybe an afternoon matinee.
On the other hand, I could throw Mac in the Rav and be laying on the beach reading a novel by lunchtime if I left right now. (well, after Mac was too exhausted to chase a stick anymore and would leave me in peace to read a novel while he rolled around in the sand)
Except. I'm supposed to be hiking and reading about hiking and searching hiking websites for hiking clothes made of capilene. (Which is this soft stretchy oddly striped material they make pants and hoodies and everything else out of. I'd explain it's sweat-wicking marvels but it would take too many paragraphs. When you buy backpacking clothes they have spec boxes that look like all the gibberish on those papers you see in new car windows. They hammer you with numbers. ounces. degrees . whatnot. I think it's just to lull you into a dull state so you won't react too much when you get to the price and find long underwear will cost you $42. And so it won't hit you that you are now shopping for clothes based on the criteria of their sweat-wicking!
The list and cost of getting-ready-for John Muir Trail goes on about as long as the 219-mile trail itself for someone like me who has no equipment and hasn't done anything like this before.
There's also talk of me driving down to Palm Springs this evening and climbing to the peak of Mt. San Jacinto with Shellee and Rich tomorrow. Mt. San Jacinto is that majestic mountain that stands at the entrance of the Coachella Valley protecting it from smog, and wind, and all manner of ills. I used to see that mountain everyday from my living room window. To the Cahuilla Indians, San Jacinto is sacred. I'm right there with them . I have always loved that peak. Driving on the I-10 on a 4th of July weekend might be foolhardy. But it would be great fun and great training.(bagging the peak that is, not the interstate)
And Shellee has sent me an email saying she came across this interesting journal entry by John Muir:

"In all my travels through the California wilderness -- past the granite majesties of Yosemite, below the Giant Sequoias of the Sierras, and along the redwood slopes of Big Sur -- I have found no journey more satisfying than the trek up Mount San Jacinto above the Coachella Valley. It is nature's gift for all who have concocted a ludicrous hiking adventure as a get-famous-quick gimmick, and the completion of it will release any fool from paralyzing fright." That John! Love....

Later: Saturday night

A plan has been hatched.
A thunderstorm expected to hit San Jacinto on Monday has been pushed to Tuesday.
So I had today to recoup and do exotic things like buy a new dishpan. Will be driving tomorrow. And Shell and Rich and I will climb my favorite mountain Monday.

Beachwalk Guy and a Pair of Thongs

2006-06-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went to Mt. Tam in Marin with three of my oldest friends. (By oldest I mean longest time. Everyone is still spry enough to climb a mountain.)
As old friends do, we recalled other conversations and adventures.
Like the time Rich and Shellee went hiking in Palm Springs. I'd just moved away and I was the friend in common, so even though they'd known each other a long time they hadn't spent much time together without mutual friend here to translate.
Shellee said she'd been having knee problems. She suspected it was from wearing thongs. She spoke to her chiropractor about it:
"Wow," says Rich. "You have really personal conversations with your chiropractor."
Which causes Shellee to regard him oddly.
She tells him that her chiropractor felt she was right.
"My chiropractor tells ALL his patients not to wear thongs," she says. "They can cause permanent damage."
"But I don't understand!" says Rich" How do thongs hurt your knees?"
Shellee hunches over, demonstrating a little shuffling crab walk.
"Well, " she says "It's like you have to lean forward and squeeze just to keep them on."
Rich sits down on a rock and loudly repeats "You have to lean forward and squeeze?!"
Shellee can't figure out why he is so incredulous over a conversation about her chiropractor.
"Yes"she says, "And besides they hurt your toes."
This is the point at which Rich figures out that what are flip-flops to San-Diego grown him, are thongs to Pacific Northwest Shellee.
She's talking footwear. He's thinking underwear.
The retelling of this story gets us to thinking about Beachwalk-Guy (To me thongs/flipflops are beachwalks. )
We muse upon just where on the John Muir Trail I will have my Beachwalk-Guy-Moment.
This is when you've done some feat. You've set out and conquered a physical landscape that you thought was beyond your capabilities. And just as you come around the bend, or atop the peak or into that distant cove, knowing, absolutely knowing that you undeniably rock, that you - brave, fit physical specimen - have triumphed over inhospitable terrain and the limits of human strength, well that's when you run into Beachwalk Guy who got there before you.
Of course he's wearing thongs/flipflops/beachwalks.
He has a pot-belly.
And he's smoking...
While he whistles.
Well, to be fair, it's not always Beachwalk Guy. Sometimes it's being on the last step of Mist Falls Trail and realizing that clicking behind you is the cane of a kind looking, elderly man. Holding onto his elbow is his elderly, plump wife in her flower-printed shapeless dress.They have obviously come straight from morning mass and decided to hobble up the little garden path by that pretty waterfall, the same route that just a few seconds ago was your butt-kicking climb straight up a granite wall. (This really happened to me.)
Or after three hours of puffing and striding you get to the crest of a Washingtonian peak only to hear the woman behind you, the woman who is helping her toddler over the last boulder by patting his Huggies-clad behind. (This really happened to Shellee.)
Should we even talk about the places we've seen strollers? STROLLERS. How tough can you feel when you're joined by a pram?
So the betting is on. Here's a link to a fairly detailed map of the wild, rugged terrain we're about to traverse. http://www.jmt2k.com/map/jmt.html
What will it be? A skinny guy smoking a Camel, wearing his made-for-sand-and-swigging-a-Corona rubber souls, passing me at Donahue Pass? The Red Hat Ladies catching up to me at Rush Creek Forks? A woman with 3- month-old twins (or merely 8-months pregnant with number two) pulling her toddler's wagon across Shadow Creekfootbridge?
Whatever the details may be, where will I have my Beachwalk Guy moment? .

The Summer Solstice

2006-06-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

My night tonite might not seem to have a lot to do with hiking the John Muir Trail.
But it does in a round-about, wait-until-the-sage-smoke-clears sort of way which is this:
I'd been thinking about my "true" reason for the trek.
Not the surface reason, which was basically that my scheme to move to an island some 900 miles off the coast of Portugal and hang out with dark-eyed men with names such as Teofilu and write a heart-warming and comical book that would lead to me being heralded as the next Peter Mayle, was not -- to my great and genuine surprise--coming together, at least not this summer. So I decided to throw in with my co-worker Mark Grossi (www.make-mine-muir.blogspot.com) and make the John Muir Trail project a reality. I felt the need to help make some dream come true, even if it was someone else's.
But, once it was all in motion, I was looking for some philosophical reason for my part of the trek. My personal story arc.
I'd been playing around with an idea based on something that Catherine Campbell , a local activist attorney, once told me. She said she divided people into two categories: game and not game.
Maybe my personal reason to climb four mountains and go without a shower for over a week and carry all my worldly comforts on my back like a nomadic camel with paniers, would be to make sure I fell into the game category. Open to life .Up for adventure. And so forth and so on.
Into this frame of mind, came my phone conversation with my new friend Alice, which went something along the lines of:
Alice:I want you to come to a women's only summer solstice party with me.
Diana:Why in the world would I want to do that?
Alice: Don't you just want to be game for anything?
I didn't look at the email with the details until about an hour before I left work today. It was at this point I found I was supposed to bring a flower for the communal bouquet, something personal to place on the "centering" table, and a ritual to share. Also, a summer salad or a dessert. Dairy ok. No meat as it was a vegetarian house. Not just the occupant apparently, but the entire building. There would be an hour of eating and chatting before we formed a circle to begin our rituals.
At this point I frantically began dialing Alice's number, determined to suggest we catch a movie instead. She didn't answer, the schemer. There was nothing to be done but decorate a Trader Joe's cheesecake with apricot jam and tropical fruit in the shape of a sun and be game for anything.
The eating and chatting were nice and good for me, as many of the women gathered were academics and discussing things like the third-wave of feminism as opposed to second-wave post-feminism, thereby making me feel intellectual by association. (Except the whole time that I was learning that it is folly to blindly accept the celebrity-driven drivel of Alice Walker's daughter Rebecca who holds the new feminism is only for minorities, I was quite confused because I'd mixed up Alice Walker, the black author, with Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse fame and I was silently trying to figure out why the daughter of a white, organic chef was now the controversial voice of minority feminism. ) Anyway. On to the rituals. First, we all got smoked with sage. I thought of Angie Osborne, a local native American who practices the old ways while fighting strip mining. I wondered what she would think of a group of middle-class women standing in a Fresno backyard with their arms outspread like gingerbread men as someone traced their outline then made a circle and a cross in front of their face with a sage stogie. Whatever. I'm game for anything! (And, besides I was hoping the sage would drive the biting mosquitoes away.)
Then we all faced north, a direction the the hostess told us represented among other things, the emu.
We faced east, south and west with their accompanying color schemes, sceneries, animals and vegetation. Along the way participants could call those not there into the circle.
We were soon joined in spirit by great grandmothers. Sisters. Someone who's name sounded like Moobeydegoosh. Then Al Gore, all the displaced of Katrina, the victims of the Iraq war, and the whales -whom the caller said would be safe within our circle.
I formed a mental picture of this disparate array of spirits. And added the emu for good measure.
Next, a flower-holding ritual got my attention. Women put their hope into a flower, then told what it was they were hoping for as they looked at the little dried bloom in their hands. It was like getting to hear everybody's birthday wish out loud. One woman wanted to live through her visit with her conservative mother-in-law. Another wanted a hot, young date to take to her daughter's wedding and make her ex-husband eat his heart out. I was becoming entertained. But then one woman wished for world peace. And the next added social justice. And then everyone nodded somberly and agreed there was much work to be done(apparently beyond holding flowers). Alas, there went my voyeuristic fun. Because who's going to go back to sniping about relatives or wishing for a hunk after someone's raised the ante to World Peace and Social Justice?
Now, I'm home after having faced the four directions, getting my spirit cleansed with sage and accidentally hitting a little gong-type bowl too hard when it was my turn, hurting my ears, and probably alarming neighbors. (Small children are probably right now having bad ninja dreams with mysterious ringing bringing out the warriors of the night.)
And on this magical, mystical summer solstice, I have brought home a philosophical conundrum to ponder along my many, many steps on the JMT.
Where's the line between "game for anything" and "too thine own self be true."?
I mean at what point do you get to say say "Thanks, but, Nah, I'd rather catch a movie than acknowledge my open heart to the universe," OR "Wilderness? Sure! But let's hike to a nice lodge with feather beds. I really don't need to camp for eight days..."

Too Tired to Rumble (or even Mumble)

2006-06-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

Cathy and I ran stadium stairs tonight.
Ouch.
There will be little blogging tonight. Even my fingers are exhausted.
I'm glad tomorrow's a yoga day. Cathy was saying how she prefers running and aerobics and such.
But I'll take a downward dog and some lavender oil on my wrists. I prefer forms of exercise that incorporate a quick nap.
This is the first time I've ever ran stadium stairs and I probably should have known it could be trouble, because I saw that one episode of Lost.
I don't actually watch Lost. I just listen to Heather recount episodes which is more fun and less confusing. (Although she is miffed at this last season and I may have to do my own viewing in the future.)
But I did catch part of one episode where Cute-Doctor-Guy was running stadium stairs and hurt himself and got some mumbo jumbo talk about miracles from Cute-Australian-Guy. A few minutes later it was flashforward and they were all on some freaky island and the formerly cute Australian, now all bearded and bug-eyed, had knife (or was it gun?) to the neck of friend of C.D.G.
Obviously stadium stair climbing can lead to some untoward results.
But, in this case, I'm hoping that it merely leads to really strong quadriceps that can power me along the John Muir Trail.

Ippity Bippity Boo (Or, What's the Right Word For a Male Backpacking Fairy Godmother?)

2006-06-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

Talk to Shane.
Not Shane, my martini-swigging, alarmist, professor friend, but Shane-at-Herb-Bauer's.
Everybody - Mark Grossi, my backpacking-experienced JMT co-conspirator, Marek, the wilderness guy, the ladies in my ceramic tole painting class (OK I'm joking , I'm not sure what ceramic tole painting is), but almost everyone told me: "Talk to Shane before you go backpacking."
And so I tried. I would call Herb Bauer's Sporting Goods only to be told "Shane? He said he was coming in, but I haven't seen him" or "He was supposed to work today, but he decided not to." Time is running short and I have a lot of equipment to line up, so I memorized Shane's schedule for this week.
On Monday I went in, on the off chance that he'd show up for work when scheduled.
And I doubted it, because I'd already formed a picture of this Shane character in my mind.
He'd have wild hair, or a moth-eaten beanie. I wasn't sure if it would be surfer, snowboarder, skater, or a combination thereof, but I knew "Dude" would follow. He was obviously a Something-Dude.
I was annoyed, but not the least suprised, when on Monday they told me Shane was in the back eating his lunch and I would have to wait a bit. I pictured the cocky hooligan, feet up, munching his fish tacos while stressed, exhausted reporter me, cooled her heels.
But Shane-dude turned out to be Shane Krogen, who runs High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew. I knew all about trail crew from Das, a friend of mine who once went on one of their trips and told me about how he helped clear trails with chain saws and ate barbecued salmon flown in from Alaska and in three days met people from all over California.
Not-a-dude Shane, who is the master of ceremonies on these trips, is a slim man in his early fifties. But the slim is new. I told him about how I'd been expecting Bill or Ted fresh off of an excellent adventure, and he told me how his doctor told him he would die if he didn't lose weight. So, in the past year he took off more than 100 pounds and changed his life. He sold his own gear store, started working part-time at Herb Bauers, and now spends more than 100 days each year in the mountains, which is why I'd had a hard time tracking him down. He was busy with his new lease on life.
I filled him in on our John Muir Trail project.
He listened. He listened the way very few people are good at listening: completely and compassionately focused. At first it was a little unnerving, because it was such an unfamiliar experience for me. I explained that I was the one that had never been backpacking before and while I knew that held great comical writing possibilities, everyone kept telling me that I didn't understand what I had gotten myself into, and I was becoming, shall we say, daunted, unless you preferred the term "fairly freaked out".
"They're only saying those things because they underestimate you," said the man who had known me less than three minutes.
Then he turned into Shane--well, what's the version of a male, backpacking, fairy Godmother?
We're talking ippity, bippity, boo, magic. There really should have been singing and cartoon mice.
First, the minor parlor tricks: without ever having seemed to have looked me over that closely, he correctly said what size clothing I wear. I'd brought my beloved Ecco hiking boots in to see if he thought they would suffice. He bent them in half and said they were too flexible for backpacking and that he was pretty sure I'd spent too much money on them.
(Boy, did I). He took out their sole liners , studied them and said "O.K. you're right-handed, no signs of pronation, and so, what kind of dog do you have?"
(Mac's hair ends up everywhere, including the bottom of my shoes, but, still, very C.S. I. of him)
He had me walk. I felt inordinately pleased to have him pronounce that I have a good gait. So what if I felt like a pony on the auction block. I was a pony with smooth footwork!
Then he was on the phone, to I don't know who, saying things like: "Well, she's short in the torso, long in the leg." "Tall, but not big, maybe five or ten extra pounds and that'll come off on the trail."
Once I stopped inwardly sputtering over the pronouncement of extra pounds, I realized he was giving my physical stats to a backpacking manufacturer and I tried to wave him off. I frantically whispered that reporters don't do trade-outs, we can't advertise products, we're not like baseball stadiums.
So he says into the phone: "Now, you are going to get absolutely nothing out of this. She won't mention your product. But did I mention you look beautiful today? And that she's going to be writing about the wilderness maybe for people who have never been, and that's really cool, so we need to keep her warm and dry and light. You in?
Every one of his friends that he called (and he seemed to have an endless supply of them ) was willing to loan me gear. I told him the paper would pay for me to rent stuff, and that I'm a sucker for spending my own money on anything deemed "gear". ( Oh the damage, "Best of" lists, can wreak on my finances, as I found out during my bicycle phase. And I think the real reason I was yearning for Tango class there for a while, was that I wanted to buy beautiful shoes from Argentina.)
But Shane said a journalist doesn't make enough money to buy the stuff he was talking about, and the stuff available for rent wasn't good enough to leave my mind free to concentrate on my job, and he wanted me to do my best job.
I don't know enough about outdoor gear to be familiar with the names he was lining up, but I'm pretty sure it was the outdoors version of "This woman needs a Donna Karan cashmere coat, Burberry classic trench, Hermes scarf, Jimmy Choo heels, and lets add a Kate Spade handbag to make it all fun."
He is borrowing for me a tent that weighs less than 3 pounds, but could keep you warm on Everest. Can you even get your mind around that? Think about it. Three pounds is like $1.99 worth of on-sale tomatoes. And he's trying to arrange a down sleeping bag that is made entirely in the United States. As opposed to the shell being sewn by slave labor somewhere else then stuffed here so they can say USA manufactured. I'll be able to sleep warm and with a clear conscious.
After he took about, oh five minutes, to round me up free use of the best outdoor gear made, we got back to hiking boot shopping. This consisted of me walking up and down a slanted plank while he watched and then told me which boots I needed.
As I'm walking around in the boots, he tells me that on Thanksgiving 1992 he stood in an ice-cold wilderness lake in his underwear and everything around him was beautiful in a way that he would never forget and that he has carried that moment ever since. He still flashes to this pinpoint of time when he needs to.
"You might not like backpacking, you may never go again. But you are going this time," he tells me. "And no matter what, you will have that one moment that matters and stays with you. And that will be what matters most."
So what's the right word for a male, backpacking, fairy godmother?
I'm glad I talked to Shane.

An English Poet and the Law of Inertia

2006-06-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

I thought I was on a roll.
Like in a Newton's First Law of Motion sort of way: an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest stays at rest.
I found a great downtown yoga class and signed up on the spot. I've been hiking every evening I can get out of the office before dark with Theresa and Ray, experienced backpackers who I met at the San Joaquin River the day after I found out I was hiking the John Muir Trail. We started chatting and now Theresa has taken me under her wing and is marching me up and down hills at Woodward Park while filling me in on the best bug repellents and trying to set me up with her single male friends.
My jiggly bits felt like they were at least gelling, if not yet Evangeline Lilly hard cut. I was even starting to get that thing I used to have in college when I was taking a lot of dance classes, where it feels good to be sore and you're always eager for the next work-out. My head was ok too. I was doing a pretty good job of tuning out various life punches and staying focused.
But then this weekend my little dash slowed to a dreary, dull, inching-a-long.
All day to day I have been in the doldrums. Listless and full of languor (without being langorous which sounds intriguing.) I have the blahs -- the whitebread, cut-rate version of the blues.
I tried to fight it. I really did. I even drove to Target and bought a Jack Johnson CD, with a song from the radio that I really like. I stopped at the grocery store and got some chocolate almond Haagen Dazs Bars. Music. Chocolate. Ice-cream. Nothing worked. Where is the crack cocaine habit when you really need it?
It may have been environmental (literally something in the air). Because Mac, my dog, was behaving oddly all day too. He was panting heavily and scratching and when I took him to the high school in the late afternoon, he loped in slow mo instead of running. We both sat down in the middle of the football field and just watched the clouds and rubbed our itchy eyes. (I used my hands, he rolled his face in the grass.) I never did run. Some choice, huh? I'm either being poisoned by some pollen count or whatnot, or I'm a moody creature in need of the sort of drugs that get Tom Cruise in a twit.
The interesting John Muir Trail twist to pondering my pathetic mood and it's possible causes is that from the historical perspective, western civilization first started heading to the wilderness in an effort to cheer themselves up.
I've been reading "The Art Of Travel" by Alain de Botton, a rather high-brow, oh-so-English philosophical writer. The book is about the inner-whys that compel people to travel. He talks about how it was in the mid eighteenth century, when the majority of the population shifted from living in countryside to living in towns, that people first started visiting the countryside in order to restore health and "harmony to their souls."
He writes at great length about William Wordsworth. Until now I was always a little flummoxed by how a guy who wrote about dancing daffodils ended up in my English lit book. But it turns out that at the time, Wordsworth proclamations of nature's pretties were a new school of thought. He proposed that nature was a corrective to the psychological damage of city life and it's social hierarchy and anxieties.
I don't exactly count Fresno as the big city, and even if I did, I enjoy an urban scene. And the John Muir Trail is taking the idea of the English countryside to the extreme.
But I am curious as to whether I will feel more "harmony of soul", as they put it, when I'm outdoors for over a week. I usually do feel better whenever I'm outside. Pretty much whatever my problem is, my first solution is to go for a walk somewhere pretty.
I call it a walk, Wordsworth saw it as seeking out the redemptive forces of nature:
...(Nature) can so inform
the mind that is within us, so impress
with quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
the dreary intercourse of daily life,
shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
our cheerful faith that all which we behold is full of blessings.

--Lines Written A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

I'll have to observe carefully and see if the JMT restores my "cheerful faith" .

Sweet Mother of God At Sweet Tomatoes (Or How Shane Tells Diana She Could End Up Dead! Dead! Dead!)

2006-06-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

Shane and Donald and I are having dinner at Sweet Tomatoes.
I've never been before but as I've spent every free moment lately hiking, weight-lifting and doing yoga, an eatery with unlimited servings where you can go mussed and sweaty seems like a good venue to me.
I mention the dead thing.
I mean, I'm sure it's just a coincidence, or one of those things that were there all along that I just didn't notice until it applied to me. (Like Botox. Until this little crease showed up by my right eyebrow I never noticed a botox ad, but now botulism injections are being touted from every magazine and television show, chiding me for my continued creasing. )
So it must be just that I am now planning to backpack the John Muir Trail.
But, lately, it seems that people keep going to the mountains and turning up dead.
Like every day, a couple is stumbling into the camp of a hiker who died and they would die too except they use his matches, or an experienced peak bagger stumbles and slides thousands of feet to her demise in front of her friend. The stories always include the phrase "set off" . They become dead after setting off. I am determined not to "set off" on my hike. I shall simply begin it.
I run into Judge Frank Jones at the high school while walking our dogs and he tells me stories about the high Sierra which he has been hiking since 1962. He starts to get me excited about my upcoming adventure. But he winds up our talk with remembering long-faced boy scouts:
"Comes to turn out their leader had died. He was thirty-eight. Tried making it up that mountain and had a heart attack".
I can't tell you the number of boy scout deaths with which people have regaled me. Apparently boy scouts are dropping like flies up there, victim to lightening strikes, starvation, and faulty trail maps.
I expect Shane and Donald to laugh at my paranoia.
"I mean it's not like there's any real risk..."I say.
"Yes there is. Diana you could die! That's what makes the story sexy!!!" says Shane. "Would you rather be like Amelia Earheart and just never be found or would you rather have them bring us back the gory bits?
I don't even have to think about it.
"Never found. I don't want the words "gory bits" to apply to my person, living or dead. I'd rather you just imagined me deciding to shake the shackles of civilization, frolicking in mountain streams, never to be heard of again" I say.
"And we could catch glimpses of a redhead here and there and wonder if we caught site of you, but you'd always disappear again," says Shane.
Then he and I are off and running, spinning a 1980's soap opera arc involving my mysterious mountain disappearance, as we eat 14 different kinds of salad, before he says:
"But really. How long will you be up there?"
"Eight days," I say.
"Sweet Mother of God! Josephine and Jesus!" says Shane. "This is serious. Your really could end up dead. Dead!Dead!Dead! I am serious!"
I comfort myself that this is Shane. He wore an Easter egg lavender dress shirt when we went to Sequoia National Park last winter to play in the snow. With slacks.
I look at the far more judicious and even-handed Donald. (Who wears hiking boots to the mountains.)
"Seriously, " I say. "It's not like there's any real risk?"
"Weeell. There is soooome risk," Donald says judiciously and even-handedly stretching out his vowels. "Just what are the fatality rates for this trail, anyway?"
Sweet Mother of God. Josephine and Jesus.

A Sunday Hike Leads to Listmaking

2006-06-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

This in-training business, as I found out today, is not going to be only about getting in shape. There's just so many details to a pleasant outdoor experience.
The decision making began in the fair-tale grocery land that is the Von's in Oakhurst on the way to Yosemite. It is a spacious emporium of organic trail mix and fresh-baked cookies. It's like Pottery Barn married a grocery store and gave birth to designer dry goods isles.
My friend Heather and I wandered about the lustrous spaces making decisions such as "apricot or nectarine? Havarti cheese or Swiss?" before beginning our trek. Those are things that probably won't come up on the John Muir trip which looks to hold freeze-dried rations. But I thought it was a good time to start honing in on things that will. Like what snack food should I carry? Do I like yogurt-covered almonds? Will they melt? (Sort of, and oh-boy-will-they-and fast. So, no, to the candy nuts on JMT.)
As we began to hike, I dug out the almonds for substance then handed them to H. who said, "Hey, important piece of information: when you're hiking the trail, open your almonds from the resealable side". I hadn't even noticed the ziplock on the opposite side of what I tore open. And so the list of what I learned today begins:
1. Take good look at packaging of snacked goods and implement their opening appropriately.
2. Wash hands after applying lemon eucalyptus all natural insect repellent, before picking up and biting into apricot.
3. Do not breathe in for several feet after applying lemon eucalpyptus all natural insect repellent.
4. Do not bother applying lemon eucalyptus all natural insect repellent in the first place because apparently it's a mosquito margarita, drawing them in hordes to party and drink up.
5. If you are fool enough to depend on some citrus-scented snake oil, do not think that kids non- stinging After Bite (the store was out of the extra strength adult) will do one teeny tiny bit of good to relieve waves of itching.
But the list of what I saw today includes:
1. A sky such a deep blue that it looked lavender (even when I looked at it without my sunglasses)
2. Wild irises.
3. a mushroom bigger than the palm of my hand growing at the edge of the trail.
4. a crook in the trail filled with hundreds of flying ladybugs. (H. called it Lady Bug Junction)
5. Lavender moths
6. a waterfall
Questions that came up were
1. Is it safe to lean against a log or do those big black ants come crawling and bite you?
2. Is it Ok to throw your apple core into the river (I thought it was, so I did. I mean it's biodegradable, right? But H. gasped and now I'm quite concerned I may have done wrong. What if I upset the natural habitat and grow apple trees where only wild irises should grow? I have determined that I need to purchase:
1. some sort of outdoor etiquette book that explains about tossing apple cores and such.
2. crocs for wading into rivers and not cutting feet
3. sunscreen that does not melt into eyes.
4. thicker socks.
I'm home now. Tired. Sunned. Happy. I have a general feeling of well-being but this could be because I am:
1. just-showered
2. eating Ben and Jerry's Jamaican Me Crazy tropical sorbet
3. sitting on my fat comfy porch chair with Mac, my tired-from-a day-of-shooting rapids-with-his-body, lab snoring at my feet
All comforts that I will not have on the John Muir Trail. Not even the dog.

Catch Up

2006-06-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

So many things are happening so fast on the whole lets-go-climb-several-mountains front, that I think I'll play catch-up while still delightfully abuzz with gin concoctions.

First, when we were earlier discussing possible hiking groups us reporters could join, I was all concerned. Even with a newspaper behind me I wanted to know how we were going to vet people and make sure they weren't ax murderers and/or boors.

Then Matt, one of the editors stumbled across a listing on Craig's List of someone who wanted to hike the whole John Muir trail in August and was looking for people who wanted to join her. I called her today. Emma. She sounded smart and funny and incredibly roll with the flow. When I asked her about the gutsiness of just putting out an ad looking for strangers to hike with she said "Oh, you know, I figure things usually have a way of working out. " They sure did this time. I think we'll be hiking with Emma.

Then I stumbled across a series where a writer and photographer had hiked the 500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail that go through Oregon. I called the writer, Mark Larabee --again someone who sounded smart and funny. I'm asking him "What things should I know about, what didn't you know going in?" And he tells me that he hikes and backpacks and rock climbs and kayaks etc in all of his free time and has his whole life and he still wasn't prepared for how hard it was to hike and write and how he wasn't emotionally prepared for the toll. At which point I take a pause, really roll over in my mind what I might say here, and decide "Oh, why not?"
"Really? " I tell him "And I've never even been backpacking." (I don't think the Palm Springs jaunt would count in the book of real backpacking) .
There is a deafening silence on the other end of the line (as I knew there would be). Then he laughed. He told me he'd definitely have to read it...

And tomorrow I am definitely grabbing my dog and hiking a couple of miles after work...

Training Day

2006-06-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 7:30 and thought "OK, June 1. Starting today I am in training. " ("In training" it sounds so officious and determined. I love it)
I woke up again at 8 a.m. and thought "OK, June 1. This is it. I really am in training. "
At 9 I thought "I am in training and maybe I ought to get out of bed."
I realized I hadn't a very specific "in-training" plan, so I did a few pliers and sit-ups and ate some yogurt.
After work, I came home to do a pilates lower body DVD. (I figure it's my lower body that's going to be carrying my upper body across the Sierra mountains.) But my friend Shane-the-professor dropped in. We started talking about drink orders while I was leg lifting and toe pointing. (He'd just come from the new bar/restaurant down the street, and I'm going later this evening.) He said his standard drink order is a Sapphire martini slightly dirty just a touch of vermouth and two olives. He must like to project an air of specificity. I usually just order a gin and tonic. I'm not sure whether this is just plain old boring or truly classic. In a lot of areas of taste I think I straddle the classic/boring line. But the main question here is should one be discussing gin concoctions during a work out? Is this proper IN-TRAINING behavior? Somehow it just didn't feel hard-core.

A Bookbag is not a Backpack

2006-05-29T23:11:00.000-07:00

I went backpacking once.
Maybe it was my idea. Often times when I get into bad situations it was my idea to begin with.
We were a bunch of young reporters. We lived in Palm Springs at a time when all the people dancing, and romancing, and generally having a high-time of it were in their sixties and beyond.
We were jealous of them. We were bored. We needed an adventure.
In front of us was Mt. San Jacinto. It had a tram that dangled from wires and could swoosh us to mountain adventure territory. Someone (Oh, please God let it not have been me) decided we should all go backpacking.
Among our number were Joe, an outdoorsy Tennessean known for singing "Rocky Top" at the top of his lungs whenever inebriated, and Debora, my size 2 Brazilian friend, who at that time wore her hair big and favored high-heeled pumps. Deborah once had the waiter change our table in a restaurant three times - the first one we sat at made her feel too isolated from the ambiance and general clamor, and then the second one was too loud, she wasn't sure about the third table, but we clamped down on her and made her swallow her out-of-control feng-sui madness so as to not be forever banished from mediocre Mexican food on the main drag.
Even in real life (as opposed to backpacking life) Debora sometimes rubbed Joe wrong. And this was stunning because Debora was a beautiful Brazilian and Joe usually had a truckload of tolerance for a pretty girl.
The days leading up to our departure were a delightful buzz of anticipation. We repeatedly checked among each other to see who had what and what we needed to beg or borrow. Everyone said they had, or had acquired the use of a backpack. They were to bring it to my place on the morning of our departure, so we could divvy up the bottles of wine and boxed organic pasta dishes and baked goods and chocolate bars and fruit that we'd bought for the trip. (I'd read the backpack book that talked about top-ramen noodles and water purification tablets and thought that was just hard-core nutty. Why would someone go to all that work to climb a mountain if they weren't going to have a fine meal and some nice wine at the end? Besides we weren't going for days on end, just a weekend trip, and how much did a bottle of wine weigh any how?)
My place was quite snazzy. Me and another of the backpackers to be, were house-sitting. It was such a cool house, in Bob Hope's spaceship hilltop home neighborhood. (This is what it is to be young: Sometimes too poor to buy groceries, but free to house-sit million-dollar properties as you don't have your own stuff or responsibilities anyway). I still recall how the desert sunshine danced through the many glass doors onto the pots and pans and scoops and bottle openers we planned to bring. Joe had said to keep it strictly to necessities. And this yard sale collection of items displayed on the living room floor was what us meal-planners had deemed the bare essentials.
Debora was late. She was always late. She even habitually out-lated me and I have a knack. But this time she was really-really late, so when Debora's "backpack" turned out to be a small bookbag, even though Joe had checked with her several times to make sure she had equipment, there was nothing to be done. We had to get going to catch the early tram. So Debora got a little envelope of stuff and everyone else got loaded up. Joe had pots and pans sticking out of a tower of stuff that stuck above his head. He was like the human version of The Clampett's truck on their way to Beverly Hills. Deborah insisted she didn't know what Joe was being all huffy about since her bag could carry ALL of her clothes.
I was sick of backpacking before we even got to the trail. I had so much weight that I couldn't look around. I was sort of hunched over trying to see where I was putting my feet. I even had trouble stepping off the tram - I was a wobbling wide-load. We couldn't really talk, because to see and or hear someone you had to slowly turn your whole body trying not to lose the small house of possessions on your back.
Debora was the only one who seemed to be having any fun, swinging her water bottle and scampering along with her cute little book bag.
That night felt like the coldest I have ever spent. Even after helping consume the several bottles of red wine that we had killed ourselves packing, I couldn't sleep. The forest was a noisy place. All sorts of nerve-wracking tromping going on in the bushes by the carnivorous beasts that were no doubt going to devour our drunken, unprepared, city (well, resort village) asses. My head hurt in a short-of-oxygen, high altitude way. Everything ached. Would morning ever come? Would any of us ever speak to each other again after the spats involved in setting up tents and making dinner?Why were two of Bob Hope's neighbors sleeping on the cold ground in the woods? Would Joe at least sing Rocky Top?
The next day was slightly better, but only because we decided to go home which meant going down hill.
There's a photo of us taken at the end of the hike. I got to thinking about all this and pulled the photo out the other day. The smile on my face should go down in the history of forced smiles. I look exhausted and beat and frumpy. Everyone does--except Debora. She is in her trademark poster-girl pose, a big smile on her face. And now that I'm looking at it from more than a decade's perspective, could that smile hold a hint of devilish satisfaction? I wonder now if it was no accident that D. misunderstood the concept of backpack. I haven't spoken to Debora in a while (we've all gone separate ways all over the country) but I may just give her a call tomorrow. After all, it's been more than 10 years, the statute of limitations on backpacking skullduggery must be over. Will she confess? Was it on purpose? Did we all fall victim to a Brazilian bookbag/backpack scam?

Me Backpack? (Or George Brown Can You Help Me?)

2006-05-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Slaten speaks in talking points: an unassailable point followed by neatly arranged supporting arguments, wrapped up with a concluding flourish and call to action. I'm still in bed, muzzily recalling that there's something, some task that I ought to be up and at, but I honestly can't recall what, when he calls to tell me that I must hire a top-notch personal trainer, based on
1.) the excitement of the project upon which I'm about to embark
2.)the risk of injury in training quickly and
3.)something about me not being a spring chicken anymore.
On top of not wanting to confront the springiness of my chickenhood at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, I am concerned about the cost of a "topnotch" trainer. Slaten and Cathy are, after all, the neighbors who live in "the big house on the corner". I don't think Slaten grasps a reporter's salary. He wants me to hire George Brown, not a trainer from a GB3 gym mind you, but THE perpetually tanned George Brown who stares down from billboards. Then there's the problem of me still being half asleep and not recalling exactly what exciting project it is upon which I'm about to embark. And then it hits:
I'm hiking the John Muir Trail.
Well, a relay of four reporters are hiking the 219-mile JMT, and I have the first leg. I don't backpack. I went once, like 10 years ago, and I didn't like it. (More on that later.)
I shouldn't be so surprised at this assignment because I pitched it. But I have ideas all the time, really good ones if you ask me, and no one pays much mind. So, even though I gave the pitch my all, the last thing I expected was to find myself the next day sitting in a bonafide conference room meeting discussing trade-off points , the cost of a satellite phone, and my role as the comical neophyte, to be followed by the spiritual Birkenstock girl, the introspective middle-aged environmentalist and the cocky, true-mountaineer outdoor guy.It's a great story: People come from all over the world to hike this famed and arduous high Sierra trail, and most of them are expecting it to change then in some way, give them something. We're going to do a Cantebury Tales, On the Road, Motorcycle Diaries treatment of the John Muir Trail. Great story concept. Except, I'm going backpacking. And I don't backpack.
And apparently, I need a top-notch trainer. I have two months to get ready.